Posts Tagged ‘Studio 4C’

The 80’s seem to be coming back in a major way with Transformers and GI Joe in the movie theatres and new Thundercats, Voltron, Transformers (which to be quite honest, they never really went anywhere), and My Little Pony shows gracing our television screens with their heavily nostalgic presence. I did a preview of Thundercats before and now that the first 13 episode season has been completed, I wanted to follow up on how I feel about the rest of the season besides the first 3 episodes.

The quality of the first 3 episodes definitely held up throughout the season in every way. The story got much more intriguing, especially when the characters received a massive amount of character development, and by around halfway through the first season I was attached more to the characters than I ever was in the original series. Now the characters actually feel like characters rather than action figures. Also, as soon as Panthro actually showed up, the show got immensely better as Panthro is a complete and total badass.

Thundercats is still a very episodic show, but they don’t feel disjointed at all as the episodic episodes are just them traveling to their next goal, meeting new people along the way. These encounters also have some sort of reason for being there, whether it is getting the Thundertank fixed or just getting supplies as so that they can keep surviving.

This is a really short post, but that’s mostly because I’m trying to not repeat myself too much. The new Thundercats is really, really good. The animation is fantastic, the characters are memorable, the story isn’t remarkably deep but still very entertaining to watch. Go watch this show.

When it was announced that a new Thundercats series was in production, I along with many others who grew up with the series were immensely skeptical about the quality of the new version of a classic show. When some production art was released, a schism was formed. Many people did not like the updated character designs, but I was one of the equally large group of people who through that they were improvements over the decidingly silly spandex laden designs of the original 80’s show. They still retain some of the individual flavour of each character, and each character that has been revealed in the new show still have the recognizable powers of their 1980’s counterparts. The 2011 Thundercats seems like it’s going to work as it doesn’t completely throw out all of the things that people knew and loved about the originals, it’s more of an update of the franchise.

The story of the 2011 show starts before the original series with Lion-O not even being the king of Thundera yet, he is still a prince who is just trying to find his way. Tygra is his adopted brother, and is the much more capable of the two, which makes everyone think that he would be the much better choice for the heir to the throne of Thundera than his brother. Snarf is no longer the most annoying thing in the show as he doesn’t ever speak and is now just completely adorable. Cheetara is a member of the warrior clerics who has an interest in Lion-O. WilyKat and WilyKit are orphans who have to pick pockets in order to survive.

As of the writing of this post, there are only three episodes of the show that have aired. Lion-O and his adopted brother Tygra live in relative happiness with their father, Claudius (voiced by Larry Kenney, the voice of Lion-O in the 80’s series). This all changes when the Lizardmen attack Thundera with legendary technology and take it over. The Lizardmen take the survivors hostage, but Lion-O, Tygra, Cheetara, WilyKat, WilyKit, and Snarf escape and must seek out the Book of Omens before Mumm-Ra has a chance to get his hands on it and the magic is possesses. The show has taken on a much darker tone and has a larger focus on an overarching story than the very episodic original series.

The animation in the show is rather amazing. The show is a combined effort between Studio 4°C and Warner Brothers Animation and the results are stunning. The animation is fluid and detailed, which should be expected of a property with this prestige and budget.

The most important thing to note is that they do still do the “THUNDER! THUNDER! THUNDERCATS! HO!” and the theme song for the new show is an instrumental version of the original Thundercats theme song.

What I have seen of the show is leaving me very hopeful for the rest of the season, so I will more than likely review the whole first season as soon as it’s finished. Thundercats airs at 8:30 every Friday night on Cartoon Network